More international forces to hitch US Army’s aviation experiment Edge

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Now entering its third yr, the U.S. Army plans to bring more international partners into the Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise next month to enhance the flexibility to attach, share information and execute missions together more seamlessly, in line with the service’s two-star general in control of aviation modernization.

“We’ve got a much larger coalition presence,” Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team lead, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Army Aviation Association of America’s summit in Tennessee.

Australia, Canada, France and the UK — all of which observed the exercise last yr — are actually participating, Rugen said. Those nations will join the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, which participated within the exercise in 2022 at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.

“I don’t need to oversell it, but we’ve got seven which might be bringing technology, two which might be observers, and we’ve got actually others who’ve sent in some late requests, in order that number may grow by the point May happens. It might be as much as 10 with us,” he added. “We’re working through the paperwork and foreign disclosure stuff, but that coalition piece is basically good.”

With the addition of more partners, the Army will proceed to work on its secret enclave that connects countries on the battlefield at a classified level not previously achieved. The coalition force plans to undergo a whole lot if not 1000’s of iterations of a machine-to-machine call for fire, while also testing message traffic, Rugen explained.

If the force on the Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise — otherwise often known as Edge — can solve such a challenge “I’ll be very, very excited,” he said at a press briefing throughout the AAAA summit.

Edge will happen at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, in May, where events will challenge the U.S. Army and its growing variety of partners because the service experiment with concepts and capabilities meant to boost mission performance within the aerial tier.

The campaign applies space, aviation and network capabilities to point out how the Army and the joint force would fight in various theaters. The 2021 iterance focused on the Indo-Pacific region.

The experimentation exercise is supposed to feed into Project Convergence, a bigger campaign of learning that examines and tests how the Army plans to fight against advanced adversaries across all domains of warfare using capability slated for fielding about 2030 and beyond. The following Project Convergence capstone event will happen within the spring of 2024.

Last yr, Edge focused on the European theater and centered around a wet-gap crossing. The U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and other allied units were tasked with defeating an enemy’s integrated air defense systems. That led to a second phase, introducing maneuver forces through air assaults to seize two different pieces of terrain.

This yr, the exercise will give attention to the Indo-Pacific theater and can test capability across an unlimited expanse of territory by tying the Yuma-based exercise to Northern Edge, a joint military training event at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, all the way down to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. Two of the Army’s three established multidomain task force units will take part in the exercise. The opposite task force is European-based.

Participants will use greater than 120 technologies on the exercise, a rise over previous years, Rugen said.

The Army will proceed to experiment with what it calls “deep sensing” capabilities using aircraft, air-launched effects, unmanned aircraft, sensors, and command-and-control capabilities to see farther, communicate faster and penetrate enemy territory while keeping piloted aircraft out of the range of threats.

To attain deep sensing on the battlefield, Rugen said, the Army is working to integrate technology developed within the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force and inside Army Cyber Command.

Edge may also help the Army develop and refine its Ariel Tier Network. The Army Requirements Oversight Council will make a call on the way in which forward for the aptitude this calendar yr, Rugen noted.

Contested logistics could have a stronger focus within the exercise as well, Rugen said, given its increasing priority because the Army modernizes and prepares to operate in environments under constant surveillance or threat from fort to port.

With the introduction of recent partners, some recent capability in development with allies may also undergo testing. As an illustration, Rugen said, Canada is bringing an uncrewed rotorcraft to proceed working on related concepts, and the Netherlands is bringing a fifth-generation fighter jet.